I remember the day my father brought me into the Sanctarum to find my dragon.
It went against all tradition.
The Sa’trovaani did not Bond with fully grown dragons, the Bonding was a sacred ceremony that took place on the salt flats of Iskar during a dragons hatching.
You cannot Bond with a fully grown dragon.
But since the Plague no new dragons had been hatched and the Vice Regent had declared a state of emergency. For without new Bonding’s there would be no new Dragonriders to secure the Sa’trovaan League.
My father, First Magus of the Moonspire, Under-Lord to our House, said he had found a fragment of text that dated back to the Iron Wars of a thousand years ago, describing how to a Bonding might be achieved with a fully grown dragon.
It was not until he had bound me hand and foot upon the edonstone altar, gagging me to muffle my cries that I realised something was wrong.
The text my father had found did not Bond an adolescent human with an adolescent dragon to grow together, but rather it allowed the Bonding of an adult human with an adult dragon.
Through a conduit created by the sacrifice of a life most dear to the human.
For my father, that life had been mine.
I remember quite clearly as the dragons came forward to inspect me. The ivory and red A’salindrax, the green and red Brax’aron, golden Ca’sahrise and stone-scaled Vah’salix. Their size was impossible to describe and the terror they invoked as I lay helpless on the altar was overwhelming. At five years of age I had seen dragons but always from a distance.
I was going to die. Betrayed by the person who should have loved me more than his desire to Bond a dragon and save our home.
But my father did not know dragons like he thought he did. dragons are not mindless animals. They are sentient. They know and they understand. And while the ritual would work for my father at my death, it would also work for me at his.
Mighty Vah’salix took exception to the murder of a child by her parent, so before my father could spill my blood on the ebonstone, Stone-scale ended his with the swipe of a single taloned finger.
My father’s blood washed over me and the power of the stone awoke, opening a conduit that my mind expanded into. That my soul reached towards and was met by that of the Dragon King.
